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Latest OCAU News |
The crew from Good Game will be back on our TV screens next Monday night resuming their fourth season. For our first ep back we'll do a quick rundown of what came out over the break, including MGS4, Brawl, Ninja Gaiden 2, Bourne and Age of Conan. We'll also be reviewing Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Soul Calibur IV, and Bajo will chart his progress at this year's E3, talking to the likes of Peter Moore, Peter Molyneux, Cliff Bleszinski, Rod Humble and more.
Bit-tech check out the EVGA GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked. The core is running at 621MHz, up from 602MHz on the stock, the 1GB of GDDR3 runs at 2,268MHz up from 2,214MHz stock, and the shaders are running at 1,350MHz compared to 1,298MHz. These increases represent roughly a three percent overclock, which while not as much as the ten or eleven percent you can get from the very top end of the pre-overclocked GTX 280s, should still produce a noticeable performance advantage over the stock card.
IGN Australia look at what they believe are the five worst games available on the Nintendo Virtual Console. Looking over the selection you could be forgiven for thinking that the range is the result of a work experience kid screw up. … No attention seems to have been paid to appropriateness or quality control. It'd be funny if it wasn't so depressing.
Metku Mods report on their time at The Assembly, Finland's biggest LAN and Demo party. With over 5000 participants this four day event offers a lot of lights, noise and great people. … Like in the past events, the Assembly organization gathered a nice package that included outdoor sports, seminars, tons of combos including music, graphics, demo coding and naturally gaming etc.
If you're looking for a NAS which can hold five SATA drives in any RAID configuration, techPowerUp rates the N5200 PRO from Thecus highly. With plenty of features and a modular design, when it comes to both hardware and software, it fits anyone's needs. As the N5200 PRO uses a fast 1.5 GHz CPU it has serious potential to stomp the competition.
Tech ARP have updated their Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked guide. This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk drive that are still being propagated in many discussions. As you read through this guide, you may think that some of these myths may have been made up. We wished it was true.
Some interesting images on the CNET News site look at a new camera with a layout that is similar in the size and shape of the human eye. The curved technology will put an entire image in focus in contrast to today's cameras which take images that are sharper in the center than near the edges, according to researchers. Plus, the technology could be a big step toward the development of a bionic eye similar to the one worn by the "Terminator."
AMD have unveiled its 790GX chipset today. The AMD 790GX chipset is here to give gamers an incredible experience with unprecedented graphics scalability and new performance tuning innovations. Featuring ATI Radeon HD 3300 graphics, get the best DirectX 10 gaming experience right out-of-the-box. With the addition of an applicable ATI Radeon graphics card, ATI Hybrid Graphics technology leverages powerful motherboard graphics to give your performance a boost.
Coverage can be found on AnandTech, Bit-Tech, HotHardware, Legit Reviews, PC Games Hardware and The Tech Report.
Tom's Hardware take a look at 15 unforgettable processors from Intel. We've seen a lot of Intel CPUs, but a few are real stand-outs. We pick 15 of the most memorable in anticipation of Nehalem, expected to be Intel's next big landmark. The story of the Intel x86 processors doesn’t end with the Core 2, and obviously other models are planned for the Future. Nehalem, Larrabee, and Atom are also on the horizon.
X-Bit Labs analyse Nvidia's GT200 architecture and design. The new Nvidia GTX 200 graphics architecture is just as interesting as the recently announced ATI Radeon HD 4800 that is why it deserves thorough and detailed discussion. Today we are going to talk about the results of synthetic benchmarks obtained from Gainward GeForce GTX 280 and Leadtek GeForce GTX 260.
TweakTown continue their QuakeCon 2008 coverage with booth babes and modified cases. QuakeCon is many things to many people. For the pro gamer it is a place to show your skills; challenging the best of the best and competing against the world’s top teams in everything from Guitar Hero to different variations of Quake. Gamers old and new travel to Dallas, Texas every year, trying to compete for their piece of the prize money.
Hot Hardware evaluate the Asus Eee Box Desktop System. It’s obviously safe to say that Asus put plenty of engineering resources behind their Eee PC project and you almost have to wonder, are they done yet? Not quite. In the realm of small form-factor, low cost computing, there's another market niche' that, believe it or not, the Eee product line has yet to bring out an offering for -- the low cost desktop.
Bit-tech preview the eagerly awaited Fallout 3. So, in short, be afraid. Lock away your wallets and board up your front doors. Handcuff yourself to the furniture and demolish your hard drives and consoles – Fallout 3 is coming and as far as we’re concerned, it’s going to be as excellent as we could have ever hoped. When it launches then it will demolish your life, soak up your spare time and tear apart your relationships.
Motherboards:
Asus Striker II Extreme LGA775 board on TechwareLabs.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on PC Perspective.
Evga nForce 750i SLI FTW LGA775 board on TechGage.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H AM2+ board on OCWorkbench.
Chassis:
SilverStone Lascala HTPC Case on phoronix.
Tagan Aplus CS Full Tower on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake Armor VH6001 Case on Motherboards.
Zalman GS1000 Full Tower Case on Hardware Secrets.
Storage:
Eagle Consus N-Series SATA to USB External on COD.
Pioneer BDC-S02 Blu-ray Combo Drive on R&B Mods.
Icy Box IB-3218 HDD Enclosure on Overclockers Club.
VOX V1 500GB USB & eSATA External HDD on TweakTown.
Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 512MB on OverclockersClub.
XFX GeForce GTX 280 XXX 1GB on Elite Bastards.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic on CPU3D.
BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB on TechLounge.
Power Supply:
NZXT Performance Power 800W PSU on OCIA.
FSP Everest 1010W PSU on HardOCP.
Hiper Type-M 780W PSU on DriverHeaven.
Miscellaneous:
Apple iPhone 3G on Hardware Secrets.
Razer Gaming Mouse Mat on HardwareZone.
iRiver Lplayer Player on Trusted Reviews.
Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 on HardwareLogic.
Pink Shirt Day
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Thursday, 7-August-2008 03:54:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Apparently tomorrow (Friday) is Pink Shirt Day. In Australia close to 3000 men will die this year from prostate cancer. Pink Shirt Day is a day to raise awareness and encourage men to get checked. Show your support and wear a pink shirt on August 8th.
There seems to be some debate about how "official" Pink Shirt Day is, but I figure promoting awareness of prostate cancer is no bad thing regardless. If you want a more official organisation, try the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, who don't seem to be directly involved with Pink Shirt Day.
Discussion here.
Oldnewby's Dual PC Wooden Case
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 21:40:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I notice oldnewby has added a PCDB entry for his amazing dual PC wooden case:
Click for the PCDB entry! (11 pics)
There's a worklog here in the Modding forum.
Gigabyte P45T Extreme
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 20:36:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Windwithme has posted a gargantuan review of Gigabyte's P45T Extreme motherboard. Zillions of photos and benchmarks etc, and even some playing with SSD's. Check it out!
click for the thread!
Google Maps, Continued
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 14:49:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's still a lot of interest in the forums about Google Maps Street View's new Australian coverage. People are finding interesting places and even playing a Where Am I? game. Not much has been added to the Wiki page yet, though! There's also some funny videos with a "Google gone wrong" theme on YouTube: Google Maps, Google Moon, Google My Maps and Google SMS. Funny stuff.
Age of Avatars
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Wednesday, 6-August-2008 13:03:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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From Nik: I forgot to mention earlier, but there is a docco on SBS, Wednesday 6th, 10:05pm, here in adelaide (not sure about other states, but im fairly confident) about online "identity" and gamers. Its called "Age of Avatars" on the "My Generation" segment. Its made by a guy names Sean (BarracudA) and involved some interviews from Valhalla LAN.
Also, try looking up a docco called "doing it at 100mbit". Its about lan culture / games / etc.. That was his first effort when he went to uni with my missus and they did screen studies.
Memory:
OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB Kit on bit-tech.
OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600MHz 4GB Kit on techPowerUp.
Motherboards:
ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi LGA775 board on phoronix.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R LGA775 board on InsideHW.
XFX GeForce 8200 AM2+ board on Motherboards.
Chassis:
Lian-Li PC-P80R Armorsuit on GamePyre.
Raidmax Aura Mid Tower on Hardware Secrets.
Antec Twelve Hundred on HardwareLogic.
Lian-Li PC-A77 Full Tower on Pro-Clockers.
NZXT Khaos Full Tower Case on TechSpot.
Cooling:
Zaward Gyre CPU Cooler on techPowerUp.
Thermalright TRUE Black 120 on Hardware Canucks.
Akasa Vortexx Neo VGA Cooler on DriverHeaven.
Thermaltake MaxOrb CPU Cooler on FrostyTech.
Graphics Cards:
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 265MB on Legit Reviews.
Galaxy Silent GeForce 9600 GT on Guru3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB on BigBruin.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ Amp! on techPowerUp.
Galaxy & Leadtek GeForce 9500 GT's on MadShrimps.
Input:
Logitech V450 Nano Notebook Mouse on SysOpt.
Revoltec Fightpad & Lightmouse on DriverHeaven.
OCZ Alchemy Elixir Gaming Keyboard on OCIA.
Miscellaneous:
Apple iPhone 3G 16GB on Digital Trends.
Acer Aspire One Netbook on Trusted Reviews.
MSI Wind U100 Netbook on FutureLooks.
Creative Aurvana X-Fi Headphones on InsideHW.
Some PCDB entries worth a look..
  
  
Remember, you can view the top-voted PC's for the following criteria: Looks, Functionality, Effort, Ingenuity and Overall. The latest gallery entries are here, why not add yours?
David sent in word of a new PayPal scam: Someone is sending out emails showing that they come fgrom Paypal asking that you (by name) have a credit card which has expired, they then ask that you reply with your new credit card details to paypal@email.paypal.com.au. Beware accordingly, good chance some will be caught out with such a neat and well made paypal fake page.
Yesterday, Intel unveiled architecture details of its Larrabee processor. The first product based on Larrabee will target the personal computer graphics market and is expected in 2009 or 2010. Larrabee will be the industry's first many-core x86 Intel architecture, meaning it will be based on an array of many processors. Initial product implementations of the Larrabee architecture will target discrete graphics applications, support DirectX and OpenGL, and run existing games and programs. Discussion on the forum.
You can find coverage on AnandTech, PC Perspective, TechReport, Extreme Tech, TechARP, HardwareZone and Trusted Reviews.
Driver Heaven roundup a trio of motherboards made by XFX. High end is not their only area of expertise however and recently XFX offered us the opportunity to review a number of their value segment motherboards with onboard graphics, they told us that their products were capable of taking on the best AMD and Intel had to offer. This is quite a claim so after tracking down some impressive AM2/Socket 775 boards we put XFX to their word.
The Tech Report gets busy comparing seven new power supplies. We've rounded up seven PSUs between 600 and 800W from BFG Tech, Enermax, ePower, Mushkin, OCZ, Thermaltake, and Zalman. We've thrown them all into the ring against not only our beastly load generator, but also our current favorite in this wattage range: PC Power & Cooling's Silencer 750W.
TweakTown have published their QuakeCon 2008 coverage, with a nice selection of videos and photos. QuakeCon was a perfect spot for these companies to showcase their products to users. While many attendees were only roaming the Vendor Halls looking for free swag, several were knowledgeable consumers looking to make their purchasing decision based on the companies that support their growing sport.
TweakTown also reviewed a pair motherboards from ASRock, based on Intel's P43 and P45 chipset. Today we have been sent two of the newest members of the 4 series family from ASRock, and they are loaded with features for the home user along with some nice overclocking for the enthusiast. Today we take a look at the ASRock P45R2000-WiFi and the P43R1600Twins-WiFi.
Bit-tech have published their review of the Acer's Aspire One, ultra-portable notebook. Building an UMPC shouldn't be all that hard, but the sheer number of companies out there struggling to get it right seems to imply that there are hidden complexities to the task. The Aspire One from Acer is, I admit, a subnotebook I fell in love with almost as soon as I got my hands on it.
ThinkComputers take a look at the latest motherboards features from Gigabyte. Rather than try to cram this information in an already too-long motherboard review, I thought that I'd describe Gigabyte's Smart Backup, Ultra TPM, and DES Advanced in an article, and refer to the article when needed in motherboard reviews. Read on to find out about these cool features!
Some random timewasters: Bollix and 3D Logic.
Motherboards:
ECS A770M-A AMD770 AM2+ board on HardwareLogic.
Asus Rampage Extreme X48 LGA775 board on CPU3D.
ASRock P45R2000-WiFi LGA775 board on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 LGA775 board on Bjorn3D.
Chassis:
GMC H-70 Mid Tower Case on DriverHeaven.
Tagan Monolith Mid Tower Case on Bjorn3D.
Antec Twelve Hundred on Virtual-Hideout.
In Win Alpha360 Mini Tower on TechLounge.
Cooling:
Thermaltake TMG2 Rad & Block on Virtual-Hideout.
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler on FrostyTech.
Zalman CNPS9300 AT CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Storage:
Eagle Consus HDD Enclosure on Overclockers Club.
Super Talent Pico 8GB Flash on Overclockers Online.
SilverStone RFID External Drive on Benchmark Reviews.
Icy Box IB-3218 HDD Enclosure on Overclock IA.
Graphics Cards:
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT 512MB on HardwareZone.
Sapphire Toxic HD 4850 512MB on OverclockersClub.
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition on techPowerUp.
PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2GB on Guru3D.
Asus Radeon EAH 4870 TOP 512MB on R&B Mods.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB on Overclock3D.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower 650W on Aph Networks.
Rosewill Xtreme 630W PSU on ThinkComputers.
Antec Signature 850W PSU on jonnyGURU.
Miscellaneous:
Sony Ericsson W350 Mobile on Trusted Reviews.
Logitech G51 Speaker System on InsideHW.
Etymotic Research HF2 Headset on Trusted Reviews.
Samsung Q210 12.1" Notebook on Trusted Reviews.
Google Street View - Now Covers Australia in Detail!
(18 Comments)
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Tuesday, 5-August-2008 03:26:31 (GMT +10) - by aftahours
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Google Street View for Australia has just been officially released, now covering most of the country. Check it out here. AUSTRALIA will today become the third country to have its cities, streets and landmarks "scanned into" Google as the search giant unveils its most ambitious Street View project to date. Google Street View is an online tool that lets users take a virtual tour of landscapes from their computer by perusing an interactive database of millions of 360-degree snapshots. The snapshots are taken by a fleet of cars fitted with special cameras that drive across the country, capturing images on every street corner and along every highway.
There is a thread in our forums discussing it here. Find your house! To use the Street View feature, zoom in on a blue road until you see the little orange man, then click on him.
Given we already have a huge list of Google Maps Australia Locations, let's start up a comprehensive list of Google Maps Street View Australia Locations as well. Feel free to add any interesting Street View links to that page.
Some interesting things from the forums:
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 4-August-2008 14:23:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Thermaltake are having a best build competition which is open to Australians. This competition will run from August 1st to the 31st. By the end of the month we will look through all of the entries and the owner of rig with the most wide spread praise will be awarded with a brand new system courtesy of Thermaltake Australia, GeCube, AMD and OCZ Technology. Discussion here.
The Large Hadron Collider grows ever closer to completion, with some amazing photos over on boston.com. For those hip(hop)sters who don't understand the cool sciency stuff it's going to do, here's an explanation in rap form, discussion here.
Bit-Tech report on the Advanced Overclocking Championships 2008. The two men feverishly dismantling the high end hardware in the room are Paul and Barry, AKA Sacha35 and BazX, the UK team taking part in this year’s Advanced Overclocking Championships (AOCC), now in its second year and held this time in the sprawling high rise of Hong Kong.
A new Vista driver for Creative's X-Fi restores some features that mysteriously vanished earlier. When successive driver updates failed to bring back the features, a Creative forum member known as Daniel_K got to work, but his efforts didn't go over well with the company at first. Now, over a year and a half later, Creative has finally released a batch of official Vista X-Fi drivers that brings back some of the missing functionality. More details and links in this post.
HWZone looked at some new Centrino 2 notebooks. Find out what's new and cool as we cover three separate Intel Centrino 2 notebook launches held this week by Toshiba, NEC and Sony. Catch the newest models and updates to their well-known series and get your wallets ready!
LegitReviews are the latest to compare Atom vs Nano. The Intel Atom and VIA Nano processors have been making a ton of noise in the market place as they are inexpensive, energy efficient and fit into sleek and sexy devices that consumers are looking for today. Armed with the VIA Nano processor and the Intel Atom processor, I can now do a direct performance comparison against two of the most talked about processors for 2008.
IGN and, err IGN both report that a modified version of Fallout 3 has been submitted to the Australian Classification Board and will hopefully be approved. This first popped up over the weekend as a rumour, but the Board has confirmed the new submission today. They have up to 21 days to make their decision, but generally seem to take less than a week.
Dirtyd sent in some PCMark05 oddness discovered by ArsTechnica. None of this constitutes proof of wrongdoing, but it flies in the face of Futuremark's neutrality claims. Bad code is a fact of life, but companies that write benchmarks for a living and sell those benchmarks as evaluation tools have a responsibility to ensure that their software delivers the neutral framework that it promises.
Checkers spotted this funny minesweeper movie. Calm down, it's never the first one! *boom*
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